iBuying is the No. 1 real estate trend for 2020, says a new report by California-based research firm T3 Sixty.
“The way consumers buy and sell homes is radically changing, and 2020 will be the year that more will recognize these fundamental shifts happening within real estate,” says Stefan Swanepoel, chairman and CEO of T3 Sixty and the report’s editor-in-chief. “The industry is changing more and faster now than it has in decades, something that becomes abundantly clear when reading this study.”
The Swanepoel Trends Report says that “after fundamentally altering other industries, venture capital and technology are now rocking the residential real estate brokerage industry. By fueling new models, consolidation and ways of delivering services, these powerful forces are changing the way consumers buy and sell real estate forever,” it says.
With iBuying, “a controversial and powerful new real estate model used by Zillow, Redfin, Opendoor and a growing list of other companies every day, consumers can sell or buy a new home in as soon as three days with all cash and choose their closing date. The model brings transparency, simplicity and certainty to a transaction that historically has been lengthy, confusing and complicated,” says the report.
It says the trend has evolved from a seller-focused model to one that serves buyers and, increasingly, synchronous sellers – those sellers who are also buying a home. New companies are offering an increasing number of twists on the model, it says.
The study looks at three companies – Zillow Group, Compass and Keller Williams Realty – that “have made huge bets on the future by essentially pushing all of their chips to the centre of the table with aggressive, company-changing moves.”
